With the speed at which news comes out in the gaming industry we sometimes miss important or news worthy things. Some of these things we want to talk about in a way that is both easy for you guys and allows us to get all the facts together as some of these stories develop quickly. Sometimes we also just cover topics that we find interesting and want to discuss.
Discord plans to sell you video games
As reported by Variety Discord plans to start selling you games. Currently only rolling out to randomly selected 50,000 thousand Discord Nitro subscribers in Canada. The article states that “Nitro subscribers will have free access to 10 titles: “Saints Row: The Third,” “Metro: Last Light Redux,” “Darksiders: Warmastered Edition,” “De Blob,” “Tormentor X Punisher,” “Dandara,” “Kathy Rain,” “GoNNER,” “Kingdom: New Lands,” “System Shock Enhanced Edition,” and “Super Meat Boy.”” There will be even a smaller number games that can be purchased and those are “Dead Cells,” “Frostpunk,” “Omensight,” “Into the Breach,” “SpellForce 3,” “The Banner Saga 3,” “Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire,” “Hollow Knight,” “Moonlighter,” “This is the Police 2,” and “Starbound.” We also don’t know how long the beta period will last for or when it will expand beyond Canada. It’s an interesting addition to Discords communication suite.
Source: discordapp.com
Wiggin’s thoughts on the subject : Last year I had some interesting discussions with friends about how large Steam had become in the digital games marketplace and how there wasn’t much oversight or customer protection within the Steam platform. Just this year Valve have allowed anything and everything onto the Steam store. This to me is concerning because it allows the “bad fruit” to be sold to unsuspecting buyers. If Steam was a supermarket would they put the rotten food where people could buy them ? Of course not, they would make sure that when you went into the store what you saw was in good condition and ready for purchase. You would think the same principal applies to digital goods in the sense that when I go to the Steam store I should not see asset flips or other unfinished games. Let alone bitcoin miners disguised as games. The amount of bad fruit on the Steam storefront has frankly gotten out of hand. I personally don’t frequent it much to find new titles because it has turned into a cesspool of low quality games.
How does this have anything to do with Discords new venture into selling games you might ask ? Well I have two different opinions about it. On one hand if they can create a storefront that is well maintained easy to find what you’re looking for and has a wide selection of games, it could do very well for its self. Now my more cynical take on this boils down to, at what cost ? It also brings with a host of questions we don’t have the answer to yet. Most notably the DRM situation that would have to accompany this type of store front. I feel like we have enough launchers and accounts. I agree that Steam has become too big for its own good, but at the same time competition needs to be swift and powerful. I’d also prefer if this wasn’t tied into the main communication application, if someone wants to use Discord to buy games then don’t add more bloat to my communication program. There are so many things that we don’t know about how this platform will operate that I’m hesitant to get excited about it. If I buy a Uplay game, I’m still going to need to install Uplay no matter who I gave my money to and it’s things like that as a consumer that drive me nuts. One of the reasons Steam did so well is because 10 years ago everything was all over the place with CDs and patches and developer communication. Now I need to launch four different launchers when my computer starts up to ensure all my games stay updated if I plan on playing any of them. I don’t have a direct solution to this currently but it sure is weird place we are in now. I hope that we can find some common ground between these publishers and consumers just wanting to find new games and enjoy what PC gaming has to offer.
EA gets a “moral compass” on its future products
PCGamer pointed out an interview with EA’s VP of strategic growth Matt Bilbey at gamesindustry.biz that EA is trying to avoid future mistakes after Battlefront 2’s controversial launch with its loot boxes. He describes making “…a team internally with Patrick [Söderlund, EAs chief designer] post-Battlefront to actually redesign our game development framework and testing platforms” so that they could “educate” teams on how to implement there live services early and correctly for future games, “…testing it with gamers who are giving us feedback so we ensure those pillars of fairness, value, and fun are true.” Also working with regulators about lootboxes as certain places now, like Belgium, consider them illegal.
Source: www.extremetech.com
Ozzy’s Thoughts: While I appreciate the fact that EA’s really trying to “fix” itself and how it makes game progression not locked behind real money, I’m not exactly saying “FINALLY they saw the light.” It’s EA, like anything that has had a bad mark or scandal on there brand, there brand has been hurt and now they’re doing anything they can to fix it. Whether they actually do fix it and make people respect them again only time will tell. I’m on the side of “there products do not outshine there business practices.”
I use to look past it when it was “eh, season pass, I can get it on sale” now they’ve supposedly taken that away but tried the lootboxes, which obviously didn’t work out. So what else can they do. If they kept it in the camp of strictly cosmetics I would be mostly okay with it. But they can only make so much money with that, so what else can they do? I guess we’ll see. I’m not holding my breath.
